I know I've said this for the last few articles but it was really hard to come up with a topic to write about today. I thought about it and thought about it and I just couldn't come up with anything. It's currently 10:24 at night where I live right now, and I am just now to a place where I can begin writing. I was really afraid that I was going to miss a day and ruin the flow. But somehow, in that moment of doubt, I spark of inspiration hit me.
What has this challenge been like? What have I learned? How do I feel like the challenge is going? These were all different topics that popped up in that moment. I wasn't sure which one to tackle, so I decided to do them all. So that's what I want to try to do in this thread. I'm in a comfy hoody, I have some tea, and I'm listening to my new favorite jam Jeff Wayne's Musical Version of War of the Worlds, and my mechanical that I love typing on. So I am in my comfy zone where I cam really bang this article out.
How is it going?
For the most part, I think it is going fairly well. I have managed to come up with a topic to write about everyday and for the most part, that has been going well. There are a few articles that I am proud of and a few I would like to go back and revisit later. One that I am the most proud of is the Discussing my Interview blog that I did. That was an emotional day and I had a lot going on.
I was already stressed because of the interview and once it started, I really started to doubt myself. But, from the writing side of it, I think it was the most fun. If I ever write an article on here, it always comes from a place of passion. It is something I am super interested in or really want to discuss. But this article was different. It felt good to get some of the emotions I was feeling at the time written down. It was it's own form of therapy. After I wrote that, I wound up just chilling for the rest of the night. No coding, learning, graphics, dev.to. Nothing. I just binged some bleach and and a long conversation with a friend on discord and I had a pretty great end to what started as a bad day. But anyway, back to the topic at hand....
I really wanted to do this article after I had finished the last day but, I was so motivated to write that I just decided to go with it (as you can see from that rant above).
I think that one of the biggest challenges with this was coming up with a topic. I had to approaches to how I wanted to do this and I wasn't sure which one to do so I wound up trying them both.
Method 1: Method 1 was to try not to pre-plan or prep for my topic. I would choose a topic to write about for that day and I wouldn't pre-write or take any notes on it. I would just sit down when I had time and let it flow naturally. There were a couple of times this method worked out but there were also time when it didn't.
Method 2: Method 2 is the exact opposite of the first method. I would try to come up with a topic for the next day and I would make a post on here and save it as a draft. That way I could jot down notes and sections of text that came to mind. This was the one that worked the best. That is actually how I'm going to tackle the Day 07 post.
I think that is the big takeaway here. If I ever do another challenge like this, I will do the whole thing using Method 2. I think in the long run, it helps me gather my thoughts a little bit and keeps me from having a confusing mess.
What have I learned?
I have learned a few skills from this that I didn't even think I would be able to develop while writing. For example, going back to the Method 1 vs. Method 2 thing, I learned time management and note taking/information gathering.
Through using this more frequently and also using GitHub I have learned a pretty good bit about Markdown.
Conclusion:
So far this has been a pretty enlightening exercise. I still have one more post to go to finish out the challenge but, I am going to start planning that out after I post this. Hopefully you have been enjoying the series so far. I have really been enjoying writing series that maybe when I get a little better at writing and have an interesting topic, maybe I could do another series?
Thank you so much for reading and I hope you have a wonderful day/night!
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